


Hearts Counting Out Beats Like Clocks

by deathrae



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M, Post-KH3D, because for some reason I can't write people making out without them poking fun at each other, fair warning all my nsfw shit is full of laughing and jokes and dumb shit, here's my secret cap: I have no fucking clue how to tag this, save me from sentimental Lea trying to make things better the only ways he knows how, sorry about that??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 12:50:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4565283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roxas wasn't a Somebody in the usual way, but he's still a person, and if Lea came back, Roxas should too.</p>
<p>Shouldn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts Counting Out Beats Like Clocks

**Author's Note:**

> This was a birthday gift for [bluucircles](http://bluucircles.tumblr.com) but I only finally finished it today so HURRAYYYYyyyy just in time for 8/13, hell yeah.

“You’re early,” he whispered to the vista, absently tapping his toes against the tower, waiting for a response that never came. The newly restored heart thumping in his chest seemed slower today, dull almost, far too in tune with his hollow feelings for his liking. It was supposed to be _poetic_ , that, that feeling of your heart beating too slow, heavy with pain. But here he was, on the edge of the tower, looking out at an eternal sunset while his heart beat out of rhythm with the clock behind his head, sullen and glum.

Instinctively he reached up to his chest, pressing his fingers against the coat, feeling along the outline of the popsicle stick to remind himself it was still there. It was, of course. It always was, it hadn’t ever _not_ been there since he put it there, looking out the window of his castle room with a confusion that slowly built to dread and then cold, unfamiliar regret. But especially now, now that he had a heart to actually properly worry with, sometimes his whole chest would go tight with panic and he’d need to feel it to be sure it hadn’t disappeared like the boy who left it for him.

He’d broken a lot of promises, over the years, and yet somehow, the one he’d never made to anyone but himself, the one he’d never actually said aloud… The promise to find Roxas and share whatever that stupid little prize was with him. _That_ was the one he wanted desperately to keep.

The breeze coming off the river was nice, ruffling his hair and his coat collar, his boots swaying in the wind. The rooftops looked far away here, like they might have only been made of paper in a diorama like the one he’d made as a kid.

He groaned and tried to think about something else.

_Where is it you go_ , the fairies had asked him once, _when you aren’t here?_

_Everywhere_ , he’d said. _Nowhere. And all the “where”s in between._

When they asked more, he wouldn’t answer. But it was the truth, and he wasn’t sure how else to answer, really. He’d been going everywhere he could think of, as where Roxas might have “died,” but that raised a lot more questions than he could hope to answer. Had Roxas ever really been _alive_? Sora hadn’t _died_ , exactly, anyway, so what did _that_ mean? Would Roxas come back anywhere in particular?

Would he come back at all?

He glared out at the red light of the sunset and wished he didn’t know why it looked like the color of blood on the surface of a wave. This was far too much existential bullshit for one heart. Isa might be able to figure out all this Roxas stuff, but the worlds only knew where _he’d_ ended up, and Lea just didn’t have the heart (heh) to go and find him. Not yet.

Stubborn asshole still owed him an apology too. Not that he was holding his breath that he’d _get_ one.

Not that he didn’t also have things to apologize for.

“You’re early,” he grumbled again, as if expecting it to be different this time than before. He sighed into the ensuing silence and scooted himself back, off the edge and onto the ground, so he could lay his back against a column. He could still imagine Roxas’ voice, could hear it echoing dimly in his own skull like it was yesterday. It wasn’t, of course, it’d been hundreds of days now since that day, but Roxas’ voice still echoed in his memories, in his _heart_.

He supposed one day he’d forget what he’d sounded like. Wasn’t that the natural way of grief and mourning? Eventually you forgot all the most important things, even the littlest ones. But not yet. For now, he still remembered. He slammed a hand down on the ground without thinking, even though it made his bones ache.

“You’re _early_ ,” he said again, not quite a shout but...closer than he’d like to admit. Repeating it wasn’t helping but if it was hurting, he couldn’t tell, and he’d say it over and over if he had to, _scream it_ if that was what would get him a response.

“ _No_...”

His heart leapt in his chest and his whole body went stiff. That...hadn’t sounded the same. It _wasn’t_ the same.

_It wasn’t his memory._

Before Logic could beat down Hope he was on his feet, turning, looking, scanning the horizon and the columns.

“ _You’re **just** late_...”

The words were soft, hoarse, almost inaudible. The sound floated up to him as on a breeze, carried up to him. _Up?_ Over the edge lay the train tracks and the sidewalks distantly below him, but behind him...

The columns of the clocktower stretched up above his head, shiny and worn from sun and wind. Beyond them lay cool shadow.

It had never occurred to him, he realized with a sick twist in his stomach, in all the hundreds of days he’d come here with Roxas and after... to look _behind_ the columns.

As he stared into the darkness of the clocktower, though, he realized that before, when he had crept through shadowed alleyways and darkened halls of the Organization’s castles, a lack of a heart had meant he had no true capacity for fear. A caution, perhaps, the desire not to be caught, not to be found... but the need to be silent as a grave, to creep and stalk and kill without letting anyone hear, was about surviving long enough to succeed, not self-preservation for its own sake.

It was only a minor difference, perhaps, but a difference all the same.

He edged closer and leaned just past the columns. The space behind them opened up into a great open room with no floor, and he peered over the edge, looking down into the great metal mechanisms of the clock. In a corner was a little wooden platform, with a little cot, and barely enough space to lay down. Probably a serviceman’s living quarters or something...

But there, there on the wooden platform where there probably wouldn’t have even been enough space for Lea to spread his arms, lay a shape, a far too familiar shape, tangled into an exhausted coil of human limbs and black leather.

Lea’s voice caught in his throat before he could call out.

“ _Hey Axel_.”

_It’s Lea_ , he wanted to say, but for all the worlds, he didn’t care anymore.

“Just– just stay there,” he said, and he sounded a little breathless but he couldn’t bring himself to care about that either. “Just– I’ll find a way down, just a sec. Don’t move.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” he said, the sound more exhale than word. “ _Okay_.”

He didn’t trust the corridors to hit such a precise point without setting him right on top of Roxas, so he scrambled along the edges, looking for something. Anything.

There was a ladder, a service ladder made of rusted metal, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember if anything else in this entire world had ever shown signs of disrepair. It creaked ominously under his weight when he climbed down, red flakes coming loose and sticking to his fingers even after he hopped off, landing on the cot and stumbling over to the ground, trying to find places to put his boots that wouldn’t be on top of Roxas.

“Hey,” Roxas said, his voice reedy and hoarse.

“Are you sick?” Axel asked, crouching over him, his hands ghosting over Roxas’ skin, afraid to touch him and find out the boy was a hallucination or an illusion.

“Nah,” he wheezed. “I was yelling. I don’t think anyone could hear me over the clock.”

“You never did have a good sense of time, Roxas,” he said, and his breath came out choked, not quite a laugh and not quite a sob but somewhere nebulously in between. He took Roxas by the shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position, checking him for other damage under the guise of dusting him off. “I suppose it would figure you’d choose _when it’s tolling_ to holler for help.”

“Oh shut up,” Roxas said, pushing vaguely at his hand, but Lea snagged it and held it close to his chest. “Figures _you’d_ only hear me when I was barely whispering for you, you big ol’ sap.”

“Yeah well,” Lea said, flashing a grin. “You know me. Sappy as fuck.”

Roxas opened his mouth to protest, but Lea cut him off, pulling him close and wrapping his long arms around his back to keep him there. Roxas’ arms were weak, almost kitten-like, but they curled around him in turn and squeezed, just a little. Questions raced through his mind. _When did you come back? **How?** Why didn’t you try to climb out? Why didn’t anyone help you?_

For a moment, neither of them said anything, but Roxas broke the silence first, his voice softer even than before, almost reverent.

“That sound is new.”

Lea huffed a laugh through his nose. “What, the thumping? That’s my heartbeat, ya little zombie.”

“Heh, yeah, guess so.”

Lea slid a hand up, pressing two fingers under the edge of Roxas’ jaw. The pressure of a dull, two-beat thump against his fingers made his chest go tight.

_Thank you. Whoever’s listening, thank you._

“I’m surprised...that you came back here.” Lea snorted, and Roxas only poked him in the back. “Why did you?”

“I was looking for you, of course. Got it memorized?”

“Why?”

“I told you back then, didn’t I?” Lea whispered, holding him just a little tighter.

“Even if no one else did, _I’d_ miss you.”

 

 

Roxas had been telling the truth to say he wasn’t sick, but it was a near thing. For all that neither of them had a good guess as to exactly how long he’d been lying numb cold and alone inside the clocktower, he hadn’t eaten in _at least_ that long. Maybe longer.

Which meant Lea made him stay in bed for a while, not allowing Roxas to do much more than occasionally sit up to (grudgingly, with many muttered curses and all-suffering sighs) to let Lea feed him some soup and to munch on soft bread.

All told, it was probably a good thing Lea had unexpectedly taken over “bring Roxas back up to speed” duty. Between reading up on what the hell to do with a young, malnourished man who was about as feeble as a newborn puppy, acquiring the various foodstuffs to _make_ the aforementioned soup, and then actually feeding it to Roxas, he had no time to do the one thing he desperately wanted to do:

To curl up under the blankets with Roxas and never get out of bed again.

But even Lea, reborn Somebody and newly minted keyblade apprentice, was human. He still, much to his dismay, had limits, and after three days of cooking, sitting in a chair next to Roxas to watch him sleep, and fretting a hole in the hem of his shirt with his fingers, he crashed and crashed _hard_.

He realized how inevitable it was only when he suddenly stopped beside Roxas’ bed, his vision blurring dangerously. He barely managed to get the bowl out of his hands and onto the side table (without spilling it on the boy under him, which was pretty much a miracle) before he numbly crawled over Roxas and squirmed down under the quilt, jacket and jeans and socks and all. He mumbled something about a short nap and ignored Roxas’ soft noises of protest, and fell asleep before his head had even reached the pillow.

When he woke up again, the light coming through the blinds was dim and too clean to be natural, shrouded in the sort of gloom that only came through windows in the middle of the night, half-conquered by streetlamps. He yawned, jaw cracking, belatedly deciding that he was not resting on a pillow, but rather his head was against Roxas’ chest and shoulder, with small fingers combing through his hair, as if to relearn the texture of it.

“Look who's finally awake,” Roxas murmured, by way of a greeting.

Lea hummed a response and turned his head a little, hiding his face against Roxas’ shirt, an old grey thing Lea had dug out of a drawer when he realized Roxas had only the standard-issue Organization gear to wear. It was entirely too big on him and had a tendency to tangle up around his middle whenever he tossed in his sleep, but now, with Roxas sitting up against some pillows and holding Lea close, it was lying flat and neat.

Except that the collar was too wide to sit right on him, leaving one of his shoulders free to the air. There were multiple things Lea wanted to do with that exposed shoulder, but he pushed them aside, sleepily curling an arm around Roxas and shifting, fully content to doze off back to sleep.

Despite his intent to return to the sweet realm of dreams, he settled against Roxas with an uncharacteristically soft sigh and mumbled “What time izzit.” The borrowed shirt smelled like laundry soap and that warm, sandy, salt-air sort of smell Roxas had always had, and it made his heart stutter a little to realize he could smell it again… and that it wasn’t going to go away any time soon.

“Almost two in the morning,” Roxas said, and there was a fondness in his tone that made Lea’s breath catch in his throat. The fingers slid instead to idly fluff Lea’s hair, and Lea hugged his arm tighter around Roxas’ stomach and hid his face, irrationally afraid of Roxas seeing his expression.

“Mm,” he mumbled, as if the gesture was merely to block out the light and not to hide the mounting embarrassment caused by his own sappiness. “Sorry I fell asleep.”

“When was the last time you actually rested, you big dork,” he asked, laughing softly as he rubbed circles against the back of Lea’s head.

“Mmm...depends,” Lea mumbled, his voice muffled, pressing his face to Roxas’ side to absorb the boy’s warmth through his shirt. “Do you mean like, _restful_ rest, or like, ‘I collapsed from exhaustion and woke up _slightly_ less tired.’”

A small, familiar fist bonked him in the back of the shoulder and he muttered a curse into Roxas’ ribs.

“Excuse you, that was rude.”

“Stupid, you never did know how to take breaks. Not unless they involved ice cream.”

“Yeah well,” he said, and he pretended he couldn’t feel the way his voice cracked and broke, just for a second. “I didn’t have anyone to share it with.”

Roxas was quiet for a little while, presumably processing this, but then he poked Lea in the back of the head. “Hey.”

“Hm.”

“Look at me?”

Lea grumbled, begrudgingly pulling away from the warm spot he was cultivating in the little nook formed by the pillows, the quilts, and Roxas’ body. Once his head had been extracted, locks of his own bedhead-ridden hair poking forward and outward in pretty much every direction, he peered up at Roxas and blinked owlishly as he readjusted to the soft light from outside. In the half-darkness Roxas looked sort of pensive, but self-assured, and Lea leaned on one elbow to look up at him.

“Yeah?”

Roxas hooked both hands under Lea’s arms, levering him up about six inches (and ignoring Lea’s startled “whoa!”), until they were nose to nose.

“I’m glad you found me,” Roxas murmured, leaning up that last inch or two to press his lips against Lea’s.

His mouth was warm, soft with sleep and three days’ worth of seemingly endless chicken soup. Lea braced his hands on the pillows on either side of Roxas’ shoulders to hold up his own weight, leaving Roxas’ hands room to wander under his jacket and down to the hem of his shirt, trailing along the seams.

“Missed this,” Lea mumbled when he broke away to take a breath, grinning faintly. He wrinkled his nose then, earning a confused look from Roxas. “You should probably brush your teeth though. That’s a thing we need to do now, you know. Now that we’re ~alive~.”

“Oh shut up!” Roxas’ face turned red and he shoved Lea away, rolling over him to pin him to the bed, thwapping a pillow solidly into Lea’s face and shoulder when his expression of half-realized disgust gave way to haphazard snickering.

Lea flailed his arms, trying to find Roxas’ wrists to pull them out of the way, only laughing more when one of Roxas’ fists whacked his shoulder through the pillow. Roxas grabbed him by the coat and hauled him up to a sitting position, noses slamming together, and Lea stopped, his eyes gone wide and the laugh dying in his throat as a muted sound of confusion.

“Um. Ow?”

Roxas huffed a sigh through his nose, letting that stand for an apology, and slid his hands under the lapels of Lea’s jacket, shoving it down off his arms until he could lean close and wrestle Lea’s hands loose, flinging it across the room to sprawl inelegantly over the back of a chair.

“Hey now, I like that jacket, I–mmh!”

Before Lea could actually do anything about the kiss Roxas curled his arms around Lea’s shoulders so he couldn’t pull away, tilting his head and tangling one hand into Lea’s hair, fingers curling into fluffy red and _holding on_. There was an edge in it. Something Lea hadn’t expected. Almost as if Roxas expected him to fly away again, disappearing through corridors and dying both too far away and too close to even say goodbye.

That memory, that moment, made him freeze. His back ached from tension, but Roxas was insistent, sitting soft and warm and _home_ in his lap, and bit by bit, he relaxed, sliding his hands up Roxas’ back, up under the borrowed shirt to trail fingers along the ridges of his spine, and Roxas trembled, grabbing at Lea’s hair with both hands for leverage.

“Not that I mind,” Lea mumbled when Roxas pulled back to breathe, trying to decide if the creature in his lap was actually still a man or just a giant leech, and he chuckled when Roxas immediately leaned in again, leaving a string of little kisses down the side of his neck. “But uh…are you sure you’re up for...y’know.” He waved a hand indistinctly to indicate all of Roxas’ body, and more specifically, how it was arranged in his lap. “This.”

He felt Roxas’ lips curl in a smirk against his skin and his fingers clenched into fists on reflex when Roxas’ teeth found the curve where his neck met his shoulder and bit down, a little sharper than was strictly necessary.

“You’ve been taking such good care of me,” he murmured, as if that should be a good enough explanation.

“And I’d like all that work not to go to waste, to be honest,” Lea grumbled, and scratched behind his ear, uncomfortable.

Roxas trailed his lips along the inner curve of Lea’s other ear, his voice breathy and soft.

“Shut up, Axel.”

Lea was halfway to correcting him when Roxas’ hands stole his breath, sliding under Lea’s shirt and then up, up his arms, past his head.

And then, with a noise that sounded _suspiciously_ like a mischievous little laugh, Roxas stopped, pushing his arms together and tangling the shirt around his elbows, so that everything above his nose was covered and his arms crossed over his head and he couldn’t quite wriggle the cloth up high enough to get free.

“What the _hell_ , Roxas–!” he grumbled, twisting and trying to get his hands down, only realizing that he’d smacked Roxas in the side of the head when the little imp just _laughed_ and ducked his head close, pressing their mouths together again to distract him.

It was working, but that was beside the point.

Working even _better_ was the small hands wandering up and down his now-bare chest, but, y’know. Minor details.

Roxas pushed against him until Lea’s shoulders hit the bed again, his hands knocking into the wall. “ _Ow_ ,” Lea reminded him, and Roxas chuckled and mumbled an apology against his shoulder, his fingers trailing along Lea’s ribs, finding old marks and imperfections that the body for “Axel” hadn’t had, his fingers catching on scars and especially on one, one jagged fatal one down his chest that hadn’t yet gone pale and white to match all the rest of him.

For a moment, Roxas paused, his fingers trailing the edge of the scar, and Lea squirmed, trying to pull his shirt down enough to see Roxas’ face. A hand caught his elbows so he wouldn’t flail and then Roxas was bending lower, pressing his mouth against the mark, smoothing a kiss along the ridges of it. Lea flinched, then, as something a little cooler than his mouth pressed to his chest, just over his heart, and Roxas' short hair tickled across his chest. Roxas absently shifted his hand to help Lea pull his shirt off, and Lea tossed it aside. When he looked down, he found that Roxas had turned his head and set his cool ear against Lea’s chest.

He looked...calm. Serene, even.

Lea ran his fingers through Roxas’ hair, smiling faintly. “Different, isn’t it.”

“Yeah.” His voice was so soft that Lea almost didn't hear him. “It...I like it.”

“Me too.” He grinned a little. “It’s a bit of a nuisance sometimes, y’know, what with the feelings and the noise and all. Kept me awake for days when I first got back.” Roxas snorted, still listening to the slow bass drumbeat in Lea’s chest. “But...it’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

Lea slid his hands down to his hips, then up under the shirt, tracing the ridges of his spine and re-memorizing the sharp planes of his shoulders. Roxas hummed his approval, the sound vibrating into Lea's chest, and wiggled a little, settling in against Lea's body.

“Lazy,” Lea murmured, but his voice wasn’t hard at the edges like it used to be, and he trailed his fingers up between his shoulders and then down to the small of his back, and Roxas shifted, twisting, picking his head up only long enough to look over Lea’s bedside table, frowning grumpily when whatever he was looking for wasn’t immediately visible. “Hm?” Lea asked, smirking when Roxas only grunted in reply, pushing himself up onto his hands and reaching over to dig through the drawer. Lea lifted a hand, supporting Roxas’ chest as he leaned over the edge of the bed.

“What _is_ all this stuff,” Roxas grumbled, rooting around in the drawer.

“Hm? What’s what?” Lea asked lazily, comfortable and warm despite having significantly fewer layers on than when he’d been asleep.

“This, and all your other shit in here,” Roxas huffed, lifting a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of the drawer.

“Put those back, I’ll show you later. It’s in the back.”

Roxas blew a sharp sigh up his face to flick his hair out of his eyes, then dug into the back of the drawer, withdrawing a small plastic bottle. “It doesn’t look the same,” he muttered, more to himself than for Lea’s benefit.

“Yeah well,” he said, shrugging and pulling Roxas back over the bed before tugging his shirt up over his head and tossing it aside. “I’m not buying from that weird Moogle in the Castle anymore, that’s why.”

“Hm,” Roxas grumbled, setting the bottle on the bed and trailing down Lea’s body, tugging his pants down.

“Whoa, you don’t have to– _shit_ , Rox!” Lea grabbed at his hair and the quilt beside his hip when he felt Roxas’ mouth close around him, making a sound that was downright _obscene_ , and Lea exhaled shakily. “Give a man some warning why don’t ya,” he said, the words too ragged to have any real threat to them.

Roxas chuckled without pulling off him and Lea flopped back against the bed, both hands curling into the quilt to hold himself steady.

“Someone’s– desperate,” Lea ground out between his teeth.

“Aw, Ax,” Roxas said, pulling off him with a wet smack, circling him with a hand and pulling at him absently to keep his attention scattered, and Lea kept both hands tangled into the quilt. Roxas’ stupid smirk was so smug Lea could hear it in his voice without even looking at him. “Don’t talk about yourself like that, that’s not very nice.”

Lea snorted a laugh, his breath shorter than he’d have liked and his whole body feeling tight. Roxas reached for the bottle again, rolling off Lea to wriggle out of his boxers.

Lea rolled over to follow him, leaning over him and resting his head in his hand, pinning Roxas with a faint, uncharacteristically soft smile. “Missed you, you know,” he said.

Roxas’ eyes went wide for a moment, surprised, but then he smiled like he couldn’t bear to keep it in anymore, leaning up to kiss him and tug at Lea’s lip with his teeth.

Lea knew an “I missed you too” when he heard one.

“May I?” Lea murmured, plucking the bottle out of his hands and pouring some of the oil into his hand, spreading it over his fingers. Roxas mumbled half-hearted protests that neither of them believed, and when Lea slid closer to him, pressing a finger to him and teasing at pressure, Roxas kissed him like it was the only thing keeping him sane, both arms looping around Lea’s neck to hold him close, spreading his knees and whimpering a noise against his mouth that was as much need as it was relief.

Lea wasn’t sure how he ever thought he’d forget this, the grip of Roxas’ legs around his waist, the heat and the pressure of them so close to each other, the sharp drag of Roxas’ nails in his back whenever he moved just a little too soon, the hiss and gasp of his breath escaping through his teeth.

Roxas clung to him like he was trying not to drown, and Lea thought maybe he knew exactly how he felt.

When Roxas tilted his head back, pulling at Lea’s hair, Lea grinned, and when Roxas froze up, panicking and clutching a hand to his chest so hard his fingers left marks on his skin over his too-fast heart, Lea laughed and leaned down to murmur in his ear.

“That’s normal, zombie.”

“Sh-shut up,” Roxas hissed back, but there was no real menace in it, and he relaxed again, just a _little_ calmer.

Lea rolled his hips up hard into him, wrenching a breathless moan out of Roxas to distract him better, and if Lea paid just a little too much attention to Roxas’ voice, burning the sound into his memory as best he could, well.

No one had to know but him.

Roxas didn’t appear to be paying much attention when Lea reached into the side drawer for the cigarettes and lit one, though he knew he was still awake from the way Roxas traced idle patterns on his hip just below a scar from when he’d fallen off the side of the castle battlements with Isa.

Lea ran a hand through Roxas’ hair, fluffing it where it’d gone a bit flat in the back from Roxas pressing his head into the pillow.

“You okay?” he murmured, and Roxas looked up at the smell of the smoke, breathing in once and squinting a little like he was trying to decide how he felt about it.

“It...hurts,” he said, slow like he was looking for words.

“Mm, sorry,” Lea muttered, looking away. “Bit out of practice.”

“What?” Roxas looked up, then laughed. “What, no! Not. Not that. That’s fine.”

“Oh,” Lea said, glancing his way again, and he didn’t think he really understood at all.

“It...here,” he said, setting a hand against his chest.

Lea chuckled. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Roxas frowned, frustrated.

“No, it’s…” He sat up, leaning on one hand, and the other jumped from mark to scar to mark, counting them out. This one, the one from falling off the castle walls… then a few from fighting with the other kids when they tried to pick on Kairi or the other little ones, several small ones from practicing with Isa, the one on his shoulder from falling off a roof when he was 12, the one up his arm from tripping off a guardrail in the sewers when he was 14, the nick in his chin from slipping in the shower when he was 7.

The one that killed him.

“It just, it hurts, when…”

“Hey.” Lea took his hand, pulled it up to his face, kissed his fingers. “I’m right here.”

Roxas’ face went tight and his teeth dug into his lips as he looked for words.

“I know,” he said, squeezing Roxas’ fingers gently. “I know, but I’m right here. And I’m not going anywhere any time soon, okay? All that stuff’s gone. They’re just marks. Memories. I’ll always bounce back.”

Roxas grinned like it was against his will. “Figures, you look like someone stretched a rubber band too tight across a bunch’a bones.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lea said magnanimously.

“Well it isn’t.”

Lea laughed and tapped ash into a tray on his side table. “Yeah. I’m here though, Rox. I’m here to stay, same as you.”

Roxas grinned and placed a hand over his mouth before he could say it.

“Yeah. I got it memorized.”

Roxas kissed him, grumbled about the taste of smoke, and settled down on his chest, tucking his head under Axel’s chin.

Axel looked toward his jacket where Roxas had thrown it, idly hoped the “winner” stick hadn’t broken. He ran his thumb over the filter of his cigarette, looked down at Roxas’ head, fluffed his hair.

But then… he wondered, as he glanced over where the streetlight slanted through the blinds on his window, if he knew what the prize was after all.

 


End file.
